Pen Necessities

Fill it up!

The coop is up and the pen is built. Now you need to make it habitable for your quickly growing little ducks. You are almost ready to throw your stinky little poo poo heads outside and get your bathroom back.

Food

Just like in the bathtub, a large dog bowl works well for keeping your flock fed. You should be able to find circular metal trash cans in your local farm supply store or hardware store. Those work well to store the excess food and keep rodents out. If you do notice rodents stealing your duck’s food you can remove the bowl of food in the evenings and put it in the metal trash can(s) to help discourage the rodents from sticking around. When you are shopping for adult food make sure that it is a duck specific feed or an unmedicated chicken feed. Medicated chicken feed is NOT recommended and could be harmful to your flock.

Along with their pellet food/crumbles you should give them lettuce now and then for a happy flock. We like to treat our flock to mealworms/dried bugs, especially during their molt when they need more protein. These are just a couple ideas, there are more things you can feed your flock depending on what they prefer: watermelon, cantaloupe, cucumbers, pumpkin, edible non-pesticide/herbacide-treated weeds, egg shells/cooked egg, etc. Alongside their food they need grit if they don’t have access to dirt. This helps with digestion so you don’t have any unnecessary vet visits.

When your girls start laying they will need more calcium in their diets. You should be able to pick up a bag of oyster shells from your local farm supply store along side with their regular food. If you notice that they aren’t eating the oyster shells you can just mix it in with their regular food. Don’t mix too much in their regular food since it can cause health problems in the boys.

Pond

Your local farm supply store should have some low walled troughs that work well for your ducks. We don’t recommend metal troughs/ponds since they can heat up in the summer sun and harm your duckies. If it is too tall for your ducks to get in, then you can use some retaining wall bricks to build some stairs to the edge of the pond. We wouldn’t recommend burying the trough since you will want to be emptying the pond every so often to put fresh water in it. Your ducks will track mud and other thing from your pen into the pond and it can get dirty fast. We have had mixed success with plugs and valves in the bottom of ponds for easier draining. When you do empty your pond you may want to consider the smell and your neighbors. There are various products on the market to help manage the smell. We have used everything from limestone powder to Coop Recuperate to manage the smell of our ducks. (We are not sponsored by Coop Recuperate, just use their product.) We have found putting river rocks around your pond helps to prevent a lot of dirt from getting into the pond. We also have found that placing the pond on a slow away from the pen helps prevent the pen from getting wet and stinky. It also helps the dirty pond water drain out of the pen.

Insulation

You will want to keep some fresh straw/hay/leaves/natural insulating material in the coop for your ducks. They don’t need as much in the summer, but having a good bed of insulation in the winter keeps them warm. Instead of always cleaning out the coop every time you put fresh insulation in it we would recommend leaving the flattened, old insulation in. It will start to naturally compost which will generate heat. One way to keep the cost down is to ask for your neighbor’s leaves in the fall. Instead of composting or trashing the leaves they can be used throughout the winter. We have enjoyed using leave because they smell better as they compost rather than straw.

That’s all

Like a famous cartoon pig said, “That’s all folks!“. You should now be armed with all of the necessary information to successfully raise a flock of ducks. If you have any questions, don’t be a stranger and feel free to reach out to us. Being big bird nerds means that we are happy to talk your ear off and help where we can. If you want to get social or have questions we can’t answer you can check out the Colorado Chickens Facebook group. We hope you have learned a lot and have a wonderful day.